Subject: Re: How to certify mail ?

From: Paul O Bartlett <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 10:40:55 -0500

On Tue, 28 Jan 1997, Ian Lumb {FPAS/Comp. Syst. Coord.} wrote:

> On 21 Jan 1997, Michelle wrote:
> 
> > In the Setup Configuration, you can add "Return-Receipt-To:" (without the 
> > quotes) as a customized header.  [...]
> 
> Wonderful Pine tip! Thanks. 
> 
> Is there something at the post-office level (e.g. typically sendmail on
> Unix systems) that needs to be configured/enabled/etc. to allow for this
> confirmation to be functional? 

    Not at your end, no.  Once you have put the Return-Receipt-To:
<your_address> header in your outgoing email, you have done about all
you can do.  Whether or not you will actually get a delivery receipt
from any particular recipient's site is totally dependent on how that
site is configured, and you have no control over that.  Therefore,
putting in the return-receipt header is no guarantee whatever that you
will in fact get a receipt even if the mail is delivered correctly. 

    And in any event, a receipt tells you nothing about what the
recipient actually does with the mail: for all you know, s/he may
discard it unread.  Some people may be accustomed to private mail
systems which actually do tell the sender that the mail has been read,
but there simply is no Internet-wide way to enforce this at present.

Paul                             <[email-masked]>
----------------------------------------------------------
Paul O. Bartlett, P.O. Box 857, Vienna, VA 22183-0857, USA
Finger, keyserver, or WWW for PGP 2.6.2 public key 
Home Page:  http://www.access.digex.net/~pobart

---

From: "Ian Lumb {FPAS/Comp. Syst. Coord.}" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 28 Jan 1997 01:19:17 -0500

On 21 Jan 1997, Michelle wrote:

> quotes) as a customized header.  If you put a username in after the : 
> then an automatic confirmation of receipt is sent.  If you do not add a 
> username then you must turn on Rich Headers and fill in a username if you 
> want a confirmation sent.

Ian.

--
Ian Lumb, Computer Systems Coordinator                    <[email-masked]>
Office of the Dean, Faculty of Pure and Applied Science, York University
4700 Keele Street, North York, Ontario  M3J 1P3,  CANADA
Voice: (416) 736-2100 x 30757; Fax: (416) 736-5950
[Personal URL] http://java.science.yorku.ca/~ian